2023 is being a year of great changes at Alibaba. Not even three months have passed since then-CEO Daniel Zhang was relegated to head the cloud division, and he has already resigned from the new position, as reported by Bloomberg. Both Eddie Wu and Joseph Tsai, who replaced him as CEO and president, respectively, will also take over as head of said division.
The departure of Zhang, who is heading to direct a $1 billion technology investment fund on behalf of Alibaba, marks the end of a notable period, during which the firm became the largest company in China and ventured into New fields, such as physical retail, transforming it into one of the company’s fastest growing businesses.
Tsai and Wu will take over Zhang’s vacancy amid a complex restructuring that will split the Chinese internet leader into several independent companies in sectors ranging from cloud services to logistics and online shopping. Both executives will have to take responsibility for reviving a $230 billion corporation that has struggled to regain its footing since Beijing’s regulatory attack on the internet sector in 2021.
Two business heavyweights.
Both Wu and Tsai are business heavyweights, credited with shepherding the technology and strategy that underpinned China’s most valuable company, co-founded by Ma in 1999 at the dawn of the business industry. China Internet. But around 2020, Alibaba found itself at the center of Xi Jinping’s tech crackdown on the nation’s most powerful private firms, destroying growth in much of the industry and eliminating once-aggressive expansion plans.
In addition to regulatory uncertainty, Alibaba, a reflection of Chinese consumption, has struggled with geopolitics and a weakened domestic economy. It also faces stiff competition from other e-commerce platforms, such as PDD Holdings Inc., as well as short videos. The new management’s task is to figure out how to carry out a historic restructuring aimed at revitalizing Alibaba’s separate businesses. With the restructuring, the Asian giant has underlined that it wants to operate as a true investment company, where individual units can seek financing and list separately.
Tsai, a Yale graduate and skilled dealmaker highly regarded by investors, will likely play an important role in the markets and among Alibaba’s main backers. A former lacrosse athlete possibly best known in the United States as the owner of the Brooklyn Nets, Tsai understands the business intimately: He was with Ma in the early days of Alibaba in a lakeside apartment in Hangzhou.
Wu, who was also with Ma from the beginning, is a lesser-known figure. The former computer science student is credited with helping develop the company’s advertising platform and PayPal-like service Alipay, which is now part of Ma-backed Ant Group Co. He later founded a venture capital firm which manages a portfolio of around 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) spanning autonomous driving and software. With Zhang’s departure, Wu will serve as interim president and CEO of the cloud business.
